Worst Summer

It was like any other June, summer night in my hometown of Lebanon. The day had been extremely hot and everything went on as it had any other day. However, that night would turn out to be a night I would never forget.

My grandparents had come over for dinner that night. We all had finished our meals and decided it was cooler in the basement, so we went downstairs to watch TV. By now it was about 10:00 and my grandparents we thinking about leaving when we heard what sounded like the roar of a freight train. My grandparents decided they probably should stay until the storm was over. About that time the power went out and the wind picked up at amazing speeds. The rain was hitting the windows so violently that seemed like they were going to break.

After about twenty minutes, or so, everything calmed down, but the power stayed off. We all went upstairs and my grandparents headed home. My family and I decide to go out on our front porch and try to see if there was any damage. We could only see a few branches lying on the wet grass. Everything seemed to be all right, so we went back inside. I decided to go to our office to look our side window to see that side of the house. When I looked out the greenhouses seemed to be slanted. So, I told my dad to come and see. He looked out and saw the same thing I did. My dad then went outside, got in his truck, and drove out to the greenhouses. The next thing I remember is the blaring horn of the truck. We all ran out of the house to see what was wrong, but I knew. The greenhouses had fallen and my family’s source of income was gone. The entire tomato crop was destroyed. This event changed my family’s life forever. Mom had to go back to work and my dad found a new profession. Memories of this always remind me to strive to become a successful person. I don’t want to be in that position ever again.

Class Discussion 3

Our discussions in class have been very in depth and challenging at times. Most of our discussions have been about handouts from the previous night in which we usually try to answer the Big 5 questions, persona, evidence, audience, purpose and style, about them and then relate them to the Great Gatsby. I thoroughly enjoy our conversations on these handouts and the relation they have to the World.

Today’s discussion about Carlos Fuentes and his life in becoming a writer worked well with me. The whole concept of isolating culture would “kill” it, in a sense, was good. Another statement made by Carlos was the whole idea that you cannot create something out of nothing. This is true, because we see it fail with Gatsby. He tried to recreate himself and not accept his past (making something out of nothing). Without that foundation, you will fail in this process. You must accept your past even if you don’t like it. This is your life and you cannot change past. Your past must be that foundation for your new beginning.

Big 5 and Fuentes

The handout, “How I Started to Write: The Art of the Personal Essay”, is a great piece of writing. It is a great story on the life of Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican novelist. He shows great admiration for his works and in his biography tells his great adventures in becoming a novelist. As I was reading the handout I was asked to write about one of the big five questions, purpose, persona, evidence, audience, and style, from class. Persona is one that sticks right out there for me. This reading sort of blends with Nickel and Dimed. This novel is written in first person, being that it is a biography about Carlos Fuentes. All of the writings are from his personal experiences and things he has done. He knows how to explain those experiences, because he has witnessed them first hand. Carlos is telling the audience how he has lived his life and what has challenged and became of his life.

Class Discussion 2

The discussion we had Friday was based on the handout from “Red Sky in the Morning”. We talked about the phrase “I could tell you stories” and how we interpret it. Some of our interpretations included: Lying (using it as a filler), trauma, or the person is just a gossiper. People usually use this phrase if they have had many events happen to them on a certain subject. In the hand out we saw this used when the woman who got on the bus told the narrator she could tell her stories about how her husband had been mistake for her son. We then moved on to the quote from the hand out “A story, we sense, is the only possible habitation for the burden or our witnessing”. Stories are the ways of communicating the important times in our lives. It is “our responsibility to do this. You can see this in Gatsby by comparing Nick as the person who is responsible for telling the story of Gatsby’s life.

Class discussion

Yesterday's discussion was exactly what I signed up for in this class. I really enjoyed how we went majorly in depth in regards to Gatsby, Daisy, and Fitzgerald about how they are perceived by others and the actual person they are. Emotional Bankruptcy were two great words Ms. LaMags put up to describe how we change ourselves to appear what we think people want us to be. The “Crack Up” was also a great part of our discussion to help us understand the reasons why we act the way we do. Fitzgerald’s perception of his life before being famous and after shows us how we can be brought down by trying to be something we are not truly. His whole concept of not being an “I” anymore really hit me on this subject. Appearance verses reality plays a major role here.